The prison system is set up to house inmates based on their gender; male or female. But, society has evolved and the standard binary system does not apply to most people today, so where does this leave the transgender inmates? Trans inmates, regardless of whether they have been taking hormones before their sentence or not, are housed in the facility that matches their biological gender rather than their identified gender. Transgender inmates, especially trans women, face many obstacles including access health care, violent attacks, and sexual assault, however, if a trans inmate has received sex-reassignment surgery, they will be housed with their identified gender meaning that prisons are housing inmates based on genitals rather than …show more content…
In step two, the trans person must openly live as their identified gender for about two years which includes dressing, speaking and operating like their identified gender, beginning a hormone treatment and sometimes cosmetic surgery, at their own cost, if desired. There are many transgender people who are content with living the rest of their lives in step two, but if a medical professional deems it medically necessary for the trans person’s health and they (the trans person) is confident in themselves, the third and final step is sex-reassignment surgery. Per Agbemenu, SRS consists of “vaginoplasty for trans females and phalloplasty for trans males”. Now, with a better understanding of gender dysphoria and sex-reassignment surgery, one may better understand opposing arguments.
The pro-SRS party argues that the denial of sex-reassignment surgery to trans inmates, who are in medical need of the procedure, is a direct violation of the inmates’ eighth amendment rights. The Eight Amendment reserves all inmates the right to adequate medical care and the protection from “cruel and unusual punishment”. Inmates who suffer from gender dysphoria can suffer from symptoms such as depression, anxiety, and even self-mutilation if they do not receive proper treatment in a timely manner and the prison systems have exploited this greatly. There have been cases where trans inmates do end up
Blight, Jake. 2006. “Transgender Inmates.” Trends and issues: crime and criminology 16 (8): 1-6. Accessed April 16, 2016. http://aic.gov.au/media_library/publications/tandi_pdf/tandi168.pdf
There is not a plethora of research on the transgender inmate population. Brown and McDuffie (2009) report 750 transgender prisoners were in custody in 2007. The only reason this population is last on the list of importance is because of the limited population. Transgender inmate population pose one of the most challenging legal questions to the DOC. How far does the DOC have to go in providing medical, psychiatric, or surgical needs to those inmates who enter the correctional facility as transgender (Brown & McDuffie, 2009). There has been some successful litigation that has addressed these issues with inmates who have been diagnosed with gender identity disorders (GID). Brown and McDuffie (2009), suggest California has some of the most “comprehensive directive” that allows inmates to continue or initiate “cross-sex hormones for appropriately diagnosed inmates” (p.288). Ultimately, the transgender population pose a real threat to the correctional environment, such as, safety issues and predatory behavior by other inmates. One area of concern for transgender inmate population, because it is such a relatively new population, there are not a lot of facilities medically equipped to care for them properly (Brown & McDuffie, 2009), a lot like the elderly inmate population. This population is as equally at risk of being violated as any of the other special
There are three themes in this statement given, which include health management, patient safety and discharge planning. The main focus of the article involves care for HIV diagnosed transgender within the correction system (Phillips & Patsdaughter, 2010). Transgender experiences involve maintaining their health following their HIV diagnosis and continuing their physical transition process. Health management “policies that attempt to freeze gender transition at the stage reached before incarceration are inappropriate and out of step with medical standards, and therefore should be avoided” (Phillips & Patsdaughter, 2010, p. 184). This above statement supports maintaining the transitional process as a standard of care for transgender individuals.
The same reason the transgendered women are leaving their homes is the same reason why they want to raise awareness to higher officials. I believe there should be no reason why these women should be battered and commented foul things in the detention center. If they are seeking refuge because of a way they are being treated in another country and America is the land of the free, than they may feel as though they should move back. The detention center is the first place where these women have interaction with American people, and the male guards should not shout absurd things and attack them for changing their identity. As the article states, “If the US is unable to supply safe housing for transgendered women, than they should not hold transgendered
In order to reduce the risk of harm, many prisons have elected to put their transgender inmates into segregation, to keep them away for the general population (Smith, 2012). Administrative segregation is often used the most when housing transgender inmates. This form of segregation is very similar to solitary confinement, meaning that inmates are put in a single cell and left alone for hours at a time (Simopoulos & Khin Khin, 2014). When put into administrative segregation, the inmate often loses various opportunities such as being able to work, having visitation hours, exercise, specified treatment, and other activities (Smith, 2012). It is not unusual for the segregation cells to be less then desirable. Most times they dirty, unkempt and sometime even
Transgender people in today’s society have it hard enough; going to prison is even harder due to the risks associated to someone who is transgendered. People who are transgendered risk their health and well-being while being locked up in prison. They face a variety of issues while they are incarcerated such as housing, physical, emotional abuse and most of all denial to their basic medical needs that helps express who they are through their gender.
Since the 1980s, the United States prison population has quadrupled to 2.4 million inmates; with nearly half of the inmates in federal prison serving time for drug offenses. The majority of America’s general population has been hoodwinked into believing that the prison system helps prevent crime, but the side effects of mass incarceration is like spilling gasoline on a burning car. The side effects of fabricating additional prison complexes for the sole purpose of preventing crime will continue to deem societies ignorance towards our broken prison system. The United States’ prison system is a warehousing institution that is vastly expensive to society and degrading to humanity; oppressive that neither rehabilitates nor protects our society. With the collaborative focus the general population, policy makers and design & construction teams set on making a change, the design and construction field can help heal those affected by the broken prison system.
The United States prison system incarcerates more people per capita than nearly all European countries, and roughly two-thirds of those inmates that are released will be arrested again within three years (Ward et al, 2015). Some facilities have relatively successful programs that cut down on the recidivism numbers. However, the majority of prisons are focused on punishment and make no efforts at rehabilitation. Something in the American justice systems needs to change so that the cycle can be broken. To accomplish this, we can look at the justice system of other countries and try to determine whether such systems would work in the United States.
Prisoners that are incarcerated go through many hardships during the course of their sentence. The mistreatment that inmates in prison encounter is unjustifiable in many cases. Amongst the inmates mistreated, transgender prisoners are challenged in many ways with abuse, misconduct, and discrimination. Transgender individuals are people who do not identify themselves with the gender that was assigned at birth. The high-risk profile of being a transgender inmate in prison strikes for deep concern and something needs to be done.
Transgendered people in America have made many great strides since the 1990s. They have encountered violence, lack of health care, and the loss of homes, jobs, family and friends. There have been many phases of the struggle of being transgendered in America over the years. The current phase we must be in now is equal rights. There are many variations of discrimination against the transgendered community. In our society we simply do not like what we do not understand. It is easier to discriminate than to try and understand. We are all created different and we should appreciate our differences. The change must come by addressing the views of the public. There is much justification in the unequal rights of transgendered peoples. The Human
Steps in the transition process can include changing the name and pronouns one goes by, updating formal documents to reflect a different gender marker and name from the ones assigned at birth, changing one’s style of dress and other aspects of gender expression, and, in some but not all cases, pursuing medical treatments such as hormone therapy or gender confirmation surgery that help make one’s body look and feel more feminine or more masculine. Medicare covers transition-related hormone therapy. Depending on a person’s specific needs, gender confirmation surgery might involve several different types of genital reconstruction procedures, breast augmentation or reduction, removal of the uterus and ovaries for transgender men or the testes for transgender women, surgery to change the shape of the face and throat is also an option. Some of those
Transgender and transsexual rights campaigns champion the rights of individuals to identify as a gender opposite to, or (sometimes, but not always) more broadly “other than,” that which they were assigned at birth. Some movements for intersex and trans rights even reject assignment at birth altogether as inadequate for classifying their sex or their future gender identity. Both camps raise questions challenging the interconnectedness of gender and biological sex, but some of the ways in which trans and intersex individuals pursue civil rights are markedly different. Leslie Feinberg, author of Trans Liberation, defends the right to express and identify as whatever gender one wishes, regardless of sex assigned at birth, without fear of persecution. Intersex people also argue for acceptance of a “body-gender disconnect” (relative to hegemonic ideals) but with the important detail that their bodies never could have fit on a binary to begin with. But, as discussed in Giving Sex by Davis et al., when trans people seek the right to immediate and unencumbered medical intervention with their sex, in order for ethics and insurance to allow for it, they and their physicians must make the argument that such a body-gender disconnect is a medical emergency, while intersex people instead seek the right to not have their sex surgically altered and for medical professionals to not view their intersexuality as a medical – or social – emergency.
The discrimination of minorities are not only on our streets but in the very cells that hold our prisoners . Everyday inmates of either a different race, ethnicity, religious or sexuality are being discriminated by fellow inmates or even guards. “16% of responded in the national transgender discrimination survey who had been in jail or prison reported being physically and sexually assaulted”
Do you know what it’s like to be trapped inside of a body where you can not love yourself? Would you have your body destroyed in order to feel comfortable again? Transgender people are forced to do this everyday in order to feel accepted, but even still they are discriminated. There are two sides of this issue: Some people agree that if you have male genitals, you have to use the men's room. Others disagree and feel that if the person is represented as a female (looks like a female, sounds like a female, etc.) and that they are a female, then they should be allowed to use the girl’s room. While some believe that transgender people should use the bathroom of their biological sex, it is obvious that they should be free to use the bathroom of
Transgender is a relatively new term; it refers to a person that believes that their gender identity doesn’t correspond with his or her biological sex. Doctors diagnosis this uneasy feeling about one’s gender as Gender Dysphoria. Often time’s he or she might undergo sex reassignment surgery to physically become his or her desired gender. Like every other citizen in the United States, transgenders are entitled to a series of rights. However, a transgender’s "inconsistency in the presentation between biological sex and gender expression is usually not tolerated by others” (D’Augellia and Grossman).